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Ludic Fallacy

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51–60 of 80 posts

Re: Ludic Fallacy

#51
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've watched a Thai kickboxing match in Bangkok, and what amazed me, and I didn't expect is that the first few minutes are like dancing, no touching, then it slowly accelerates over say 30 minutes or something to a full out thing. If you can bend the rules in those first 5 minutes, even a sedate developer might stand a chance!

That's like saying that after you start an engine it's idling for a while and consuming very little, if you could just get you your destination while it's still idling you could save so much fuel. You opponent will not wait for you to bend the rules a few times before they react unless the first bend knocks them out. Pushing people off the fighting surface might work once, maybe twice. If that's the only weapon in a…

Caveat is I’m talking about the Tim Ferris claim! Yes it’s definitely a once only trick.

Re: Ludic Fallacy

#52
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the central point here is that «assume that» is fine when working with a math problem, but can kill you in real life. If you’ve just lost two billion dollars, or killed 200,000 people in a preventable war, no one cares that the assumptions were reasonable.

Right, but the study has nothing to do with this, because the question was not in real life, but about a fictional scenario. "Assume you jump off a bridge. Would you be dead?" "No, because I'd change my mind. What, you think I'd jump off a bridge because someone tells me to?" "No, but I'd rather expect you'd assume it because I tell you, in the context of a hypothetical."

But this is experts we are talking about. There's supposed to be some degree of translation between models and real life. The point of the fallacy is that this translation can be very debatable and restricted in many fields, and that a good observer with decent intuition can beat those models easily.

If this was about a purely intellectual roleplaying game with internal rules there would be no discussion in the first place.

Re: Ludic Fallacy

#54

And yet companies make a fortune betting on markets or sports using those exact "Ludic Fallacy" models - like linear regressions, probability etc. They know it's real life, and many someone else is fixing the coin toss, but they can still get an advantage. In any real casino, 99 blacks in a row and they'd shut down the table.

...and then a financial crisis hits and suddenly they expect the government to bail them out because they didn't account for that risk in their models.

Ha ha well that’s a different story more to do with bonus culture. An example of where the street smarts might come into play in modelling the modellers and predicting 2008

Re: Ludic Fallacy

#55
post #4
post #2

Interesting. I see the examples don’t cite “technical analysis” of price action of stocks. Is that also an example of Ludic fallacy?

The ludic fallacy could apply here as well. If you calculate that on average you will make a profit but in actuality this profit fluctuates so wildly that you will almost certainly go bankrupt in the process the ludic fallacy could apply. Another criticism by Nassim Taleb to this field is the use of the normal distribution to distributions that are not normal at all. This could lead to the problem that I described in…

Also the fact that many market players got bailed out by governments when things went south. They may have been aware that this would happen all along, which would mean the explicit market game and the real market game are 2 very different things with very different rules.

Re: Ludic Fallacy

#56
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the assumption is the point. When you have enough data to suggest your model is wrong, you should throw away the model and the assumptions it's based on, not the data. The fact that your model can be justified as technically correct is irrelevant. When the data doesn't fit the model any more, the supposed absolute correctness of the textbook model blocks your ability to understand what's happening. This isn't eve…

> When you have enough data to suggest your model is wrong, you should throw away the model and the assumptions it's based on, not the data. In the example, you agreed to assume the coin is fair. That is, you agreed to stick to the model even if it turns out to be wrong. Throwing the model away, however suggested by the evidence, is just violating the rules you agreed to.

I'd call it the opposite. There is statistically no such thing as 99 heads in row. So when someone says "assume the coin toss is fair, 99 heads in row happen, what are the odds the next will be heads". Your answer should not be "50%". Your answer should be "You just asked me a bullshit question because there is basically no such thing as 99 heads in a row in the real word. In a hypothetical world maybe but in the real world nope"

Or maybe to be nicer about it the proper response is "So are we talking about the real world because in the real world the odds of 99 heads in a row are 1 in 2^100 which is effectively zero so I just want to verify you understand that your hypothetical situation and conclusion will have no basis in reality. If you actually saw 99 heads in a row then the odds are infinitely higher the coin is broken and is not fair"

Re: Ludic Fallacy

#57
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying that after you start an engine it's idling for a while and consuming very little, if you could just get you your destination while it's still idling you could save so much fuel. You opponent will not wait for you to bend the rules a few times before they react unless the first bend knocks them out. Pushing people off the fighting surface might work once, maybe twice. If that's the only weapon in a…

Caveat is I’m talking about the Tim Ferris claim! Yes it’s definitely a once only trick.

I understand but what I meant by "once" was "exactly once", meaning the first round of the first fight in the championship. It's easy to spot a one trick pony because that's all they try. The second time the opponent would just overwhelm him with superior technique and physical force, we're talking about a national championship, there's no shortage of those. There's only so much pushing you can do when you're met with a kick to the head. And the weight advantage is meaningless once you realize weigh-in tricks have been used since forever, he'd just meet another guy who did the same.

No, the more I look at this the more I realize the story of the regular guy exploiting loopholes to win a championship is a good "how the little guy won" story but also a complete fabrication. It's only good for the circle-jerk media, he gets to sell himself as special, they get to fill their pages with something.

All of his claims in general seem to always reference some "evidence" that's never available in any form. A con-man using his cons to sell his cons. His old [1] and new [1] bios are pretty telling, his achievements tend to come and go.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20070308133948/http://fourhourwo...

[1] https://tim.blog/about/

Re: Ludic Fallacy

#59
post #14
post #5

The nicest example of this I've seen is that Tim Ferris won a kickboxing championship without being a kickboxer, https://www.martialdevelopment.com/how-to-win-kickboxing-wro... The fallacy is that winning a world championship at kickboxing must mean that you're an excellent kickboxer, but nope.

I'm not sure what kind of championship that was but for an experienced fighter having a 30 pound "handicap" versus an inexperienced one should amount to no real life disadvantage. Don't underestimate what a 165 lbs person's tibia can do to a 195 lbs person's head on even thigh. There's no "hack" to not getting your lights knocked out with one punch/kick from a good fighter 30 lbs lighter than you. And tricking the we…

According to him, he didn't just kickbox with a 30 pound weight advantage, he also won entirely by forcing ring-outs. He essentially treated the competitions like a sumo match, something other competitors didn't typically try for or practice defending against all that much.

Re: Ludic Fallacy

#60
Seems like a long winded and sanctimonious way of saying that models are simpler than the reality that they mimic.

Bears in woods and catholic popes come to mind.

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